`Spirits Of The Dead` Adapts 3 Poe Tales

December 12, 1986|By BILL KELLEY, Television Writer

Fire up the VCR: 1968`s Spirits of the Dead (midnight, WDZL-Ch. 39), filmed in Europe as Tales of Mystery and the Imagination, strikingly adapts three Edgar Allan Poe tales. The best part is Toby Dammit: or, Never Bet the Devil Your Head, directed by Federico Fellini, with Terence Stamp as a British actor who travels to Rome to make a movie. This is one of Fellini`s most visually haunting films, and the episode is just brief enough not to tax the flimsy storyline, which only uses a portion of Poe`s story. The other two segments, Roger Vadim`s Metzengerstein (with Jane and Peter Fonda) and Louis Malle`s William Wilson (with Alain Delon), are second-rate.